Saturday, April 28, 2007

It's really something, the onionIt doesn't have entrails.It is itself, through and through,all of it just onion.Onionlike on the outside,oniony to the core,the onion could look into itselfwithout any fear.

In us lurks the strange and the wildbarely covered by the skin.In us, an inferno of guts,violent anatomy.In the onion, nothing but the onion,no twisted intestines,Undressed many times, it repeats itselfto its depths.

A consistent creature, the onion,a well-made thing.Inside one, simply another,in a larger, a smaller,and in the next, the next.Centrifugal fugue.Echo in unison.

The onion, I do appreciate it:the prettiest belly in the world.It wears halosfor its own glory.In us, fat, nerves, veins,valves, and secrets.For us it's unattainable,the idiotism of perfection.

Friday, April 27, 2007

How easily happiness begins bydicing onions. A lump of sweet butterslithers and swirls across the floorof the sauté pan, especially if itserrant path crosses a tiny slickof olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

The could mean soup or risottoor chutney (from the Sanskritchatni, to lick), Slowly the onionsgo limp and then nacreousand then what cookbooks call clear,though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.It's true it can make you weepto peel them, to unfurl and to teasefrom the taut ball first the brittle,caramel-colored and decrepitpapery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onionwrapped around its growing body,for there's nothing to an onionbut skin, and it's true you can go onweeping as you go on in, throughthe moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go onin to the core, to the bud-like,acrid, fibrous skins denselyclustered there, stalky and in-complete, and these are the mostpungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animalcomfort that infant humans secret.This is the best domestic perfume.You sit down to eat with a rumorof onions still on your twice-washedhands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usualendurance. It's there when you clean upand rinse the wine glasses and makea joke, and you leave the minutestwhiff of it on the light switch,later, when you climb the stairs.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Reality demandswe also state the following:life goes on.It does so near Cannae and Borodino,at Kosovo Polje and Guernica.

There is a gas stationin a small plaza in Jericho,and freshly paintedbenches near Bila Hora.Letters travelbetween Pearl Harbor and Hastings,a furniture truck passesbefore the eyes of the lion of Cheronea,and only an atmospheric front advancestowards the blossoming orchards near Verdun.

There is so much of Everythingthat Nothing is quite well concealed.Music flowsfrom yachts near Actiumand couples on board dance in the sunlight.

So much keeps happening,that it must be happening everywhere.Where stone is heaped on stone,there is an ice cream truckbesieged by children.Where Hiroshima had been,Hiroshima is againmanufacturing productsfor everyday use.

Not without its charms is this terrible world,not without its morningsworth our waking.

In the fields of Maciejowicethe grass is greenand on the grass is––you know how grass is––transparent dew.

Maybe there are no fields other than battlefields,those still remembered,and those long forgotten,birch woods and cedar woods,snows and sands, iridescent swamps,and ravines of dark defeatwhere today, in sudden need,you squat behind a bush.

What moral flows from this? Maybe none.But what really flows is quickly-drying blood,and as always, some rivers and clouds.

There's a gas stationon a little square in Jericho,and wet painton park benches in Bila Hora.Letters fly back and forthbetween Pearl Harbor and Hastings,a moving van passesbeneath the eye of the lion at Chaeronea,and the blooming orchards near Verduncannot escapethe approaching atmospheric front.

There is so much Everythingthat Nothing is hidden quite nicely.Music poursfrom the yachts moored at Actiumand couples dance on the sunlit decks.

So much is always going on,that it must be going on all over.Where not a stone still stands,you see the Ice Cream Manbesieged by children.Where Hiroshima had beenHiroshima is again,producing many productsfor everyday use.This terrifying world is not devoid of charms,of the morningsthat make waking up worthwhile.

The grass is greenon Maciejowice's fields,and it is studded with dew,as is normal grass.

Perhaps all fields are battlefields,those we rememberand those that are forgotten:the birch forests and the cedar forests,the snow and the sand, the iridescent swampsand the canyons of black defeat,where now, when the need strikes, you don't cowerunder a bush but squat behind it.

What moral flows from this? Probably none.Only that blood flows, drying quickly,and, as always, a few rivers, a few clouds.

Cannae: an ancient village in Italy, the setting of the crushing defeat suffered by the Romans at the hand of Hannibal in 216 B.C.

Borodino: a village seventy miles west of Moscow, saw major conflict between the French army under Napoleon and the Russian army under General Kutuzov on September 7, 1812. The battle is chiefly remembered for the heavy casualties suffered on both sides.

Kosovo Polje: is infamous for the battle fought there on June 5, 1389, between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire that resulted in the collapse of Serbia.

Guernica: a small city in the Basque region of Spain, was subjected to a massive aerial bombing attack by the German air force, aided by Italy and Spain's national Fascist party, on April 26, 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War.

Jericho, located on the bank of the West Bank of the Jordan river, was the first Canaanite city to be attacked by the Israelites according to the account given in Joshua I:I-6:27.

Bilá Hora, near Prague, was the site of the Bohemian defeat at the hands of the Habsburgs on November 8 1620.

Pearl Harbor was a United States naval base attacked without warning by the Japanese air force on December 7, 1941.Hastings, sixty-two miles southeast of London, is famed as the setting for the victory of Norman invaders led by William the Conqueror over English forces serving King Harold on October 14, 1066.

Chaeronea, and ancient town in central Greece, was the site of the victory of Philip II of Macedon over a confederation of Greek states in 338 B.C.

Verdon, a garrison town in northeastern France, was reduced to ruins during its historic resistance to German forces in a series of World War I battles that ended in French victory during August 1917.

Actium was the scene of the decisive naval victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra on September 2.

Hiroshima is the Japanese city on which the United States dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on August 6, 1945.

Maciejowice is a village near Garwlolin, Poland, where on October 10, 1794, Polish forces under Tadeusz Kosciuszko were defeated by the Russian army under General Fersen.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

You are grown up, surely it is time for youto set off and look for your father, who is missing.You have had photographs, but they were takenby the family, mostly in black-and-white.Those who knew him, women especially,say: "He was better looking.You would have had to see him yourself."They flutter their fans.Resentfully, they say:"There is nothing here that does him justice."

You are over six foot yourself, and well set-up.Nothing has been lacking in your education.But it is not for you they languish and declinein their silken reveries, it is not for youthat their eyes soften, mouths tickle with remembrance.They think of someone they are jealous of in time.

Up to now, you have hardly been in time.For twenty years, the sea has been a bowl,still, permanent, in which the island sat.The ladies were so many courtesy aunts,the suitors people who for her own amusementyour mother entertains. They can be woveninto her habitual account of day upon day:those webs in which you are peripheral, or missing.

Without announcement, you will find yourselfa small boat, launched into an actual Ocean.If you look for hands, there will be only two.If you think, you are the mirror of your thinking.Your skin burns, your hair bleaches from the salt.Any sail you put up has your own name marked upon it.In the wake you leave, the waves rehearseand forget you.

The Ocean is empty, but there are alwayslandfalls. Arriving at evening, no water left,sailing by a difficult strait into the harbor,you will find, always, your father has been there before you.In one village they will tell you that they ate him,but they are not convincing, their eyes shift.In another portyou will find his image in a mud phallic god.Always the ladies,holding up the bronze mirror, rouging their nipples,will say of him: "How could I not remember?"Out of remembering, they will take you to their bedswhere he has been before you.It is hard to imagine a place he has not been.

2.

You must sail into another Ocean, outsidethe possible world: a frozenincumbrance of a place, ice monumentsbreaking and re-forming, the song of the tall ice.If there are inhabitants, they do not speakany of the supple tongues you have picked up, voyaging.They neither remember you nor remember him.They sing into your mind: "He is not here"Images flicker and dance in the inhuman sky:it might be your father, but it is only image.You have arrived beyond the end of the world.You have yourself, otherwise there is nothing here.

Even into these waters, Summer comes.A short slackening of the iceout of which your boat goes free, unguided.You are interior to the wave, you are yourself.Being is not a comfort, but an instruction.As you move north, you civilizethe islands: these are people who could be men.They incline to you, recognizing the changein your face. They offer their daughters to you,none of whom has lain with a man. They cry: "Change!"What they see, looking at you, effects it.

Months, perhaps years later, after meetingwith easy indifference women with the feet of birds,women with dogs barking from their bellies, you returnto the place you set out from, a placedifficult to remember.

Old women come down to the beach. Their fans have rotted.suitors come down, but they have now no swords.Your mother comes. She does not know what to sayafter all this time. Her eyes have blurredwith the years, even in that place of long-woven calm.She finds you hard to recognize. "Welcome, Son?"she says with uncertainty. "Welcome, Husband?"

Monday, April 23, 2007

The Trojan Waris over now; I don't recall who won it.The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leaveso many dead so far from their own homeland.But still, my homeward was has proved too long.While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don't know where I am or what this placecan be. It would appear some filthy island,with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs.A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other.Grass and huge stones . . . Telemachus, my son!To a wanderer the faces of all islandsresemble one another. And the mindtrips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons,run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears.I can't remember how the war come out;even how old you are––I can't remember.

Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong.Only the gods know if we'll see each otheragain. You've long since ceased to be that babebefore whom I reined in the plowing bullocks.Had it not been for Palamedes' trickwe two would still be living in one household.But maybe he was right; away from meyou are quite safe from all Oedipal passions,and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Nothing exists that is not marred; thereforewe are obliged to imagine how things might be:the seaat its green uttermost, the shorewhite to exaggeration, white beforeit was checked and clouded by its spent debris.

Nothing exists that does not end, and soto knowledge we must deliberately be untrue:youmurmuring that you will not go, when you will go,promising to do always what you cannot do:hold the sun steady, and the sky new.

No one exists who can be loved the sameby day as by dark; it is that sleeping place,lame,we attempt to follow into and cannot trace,that makes us lie, saying we know his faceas if we knew even half of his true name.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Where is the written doe headed through these written woods?To drink from the written springthat copies her muzzle like carbon paper?Why is she raising her head, does she hear something?Perched on four legs borrowed from the truthshe pricks up her ears from under my fingertips.Silence––even this word rustles across the pageand parts the branchesstemming from the word "woods."

Above the blank page, poised to pounce, lurkletters, which might spell trouble,penning sentencesfrom which there will be no escape.

There is, in an ink drop, a goodly supplyof hunters, eyes winked,ready to charge down this steep pen,circle the doe, and sight their guns.

They forget there is no life here.Different laws, black and white, hold sway.The blink of an eye will last as long as I want,allowing division into little eternitiesfull of bullets stopped in mid-flight.Nothing will happen forever here if I say so.Not even a leaf will fall without my go-ahead,nor will a blade of grass bend under the full stop of the hoof.

Then is there such a worldwhere I wield fate unfettered?A time I bind with strings of signs?Existence without end at my command?

The joy of writing.The prospect of preserving.Revenge of a mortal hand.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting––over and over announcing your placein the family of things.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Once more it is early summer,Like an opal, in Venice.I listen to the monks singVespers in San Giorgio Maggiore.Ten years have gone by. I amNo longer alone. My littleDaughter and I sit hand in hand,As the falling sunlight risesUp Palladio’s noble aislesAnd shimmers in the incense.The incense billows overThe altar. The MagnificatOf May Day surges through the incense.Six years ago, another May Day,Mary played in a meadow stream,And caught emerald green baby frogs.Overhead then, dive bombers wroteMonograms of death in the sky.They are still there. Now they haveA new trick. At “He has put downThe mighty from their seat,” oneOf them breaks the sound barrierWith a shuddering belch of hate,One omnipresent sound inThe sky of Tiepolo.The same shave jowled apes sit atThe same round mahogany tables,Just across those pretty mountains.They are pushing all this prettyPlanet, Venice, and Palladio,And you and me, and the goldenSun, nearer and nearer toTotal death. Nothing can stop them.Soon it will be over. ButThis music, and the incense,And the solemn columned thought,And the poem of a virgin,And you and me, and VeniceIn the May Day evening on theFiery waters, we have our ownEternity, so fleeting that theyCan never touch it, or evenKnow that it has passed them by.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

In the cold, cold parlormy mother laid out Arthurbeneath the chromographs:Edward, Prince of Wales,with Princess Alexandra,and King George with Queen Mary.Below them on the tablestood a stuffed loonshot and stuffed by UncleArthur, Arthur's father.

Since Uncle Arthur fired a bullet into him,he hadn't said a word.He kept his own counselon his white, frozen lake,the marble-topped table.His breast was deep and white,cold and caressable;his eyes were red glass,much to be desired.

Arthur was very small.He was all white, like a dollthat hadn't been painted yet.Jack Frost had started to paint himthe way he always paintedthe Maple Leaf (Forever).He had just begun on his hair,a few red strokes, and thenJack Frost had dropped the brushand left him white, forever.

The gracious royal coupleswere warm in red and ermine;their feet were well wrapped upin the ladies' ermine trains.They invited Arthur to bethe smallest page at court.But how could Arthur go,clutching his tiny lily,with his eyes shut up so tightand the roads deep in snow?

Friday, April 13, 2007

There are few of us now, soonThere will be none. We were comradesTogether, we believed weWould see with our own eyes the newWorld where man was no longerWolf to man, but men and womenWere all brothers and loversTogether. We will not see it.We will not see it, none of us.It is farther off than we thought.In our young days we believedThat as we grew old and fellOut of rank, new recruits, youngAnd with the wisdom of youth,Would take our places and theySurely would grow old in theGolden Age. They have not come.They will not come. There are notMany of us left. Once weMarched in closed ranks, today eachOf us fights off the enemy,A lonely isolated guerrilla.All this has happened before,Many times. It does not matter.We were comrades together.Life was good for us. It isGood to be brave — nothing isBetter. Food tastes better. WineIs more brilliant. Girls are moreBeautiful. The sky is bluerFor the brave — for the brave andHappy comrades and for theLonely brave retreating warriors.You had a good life. Even allIts sorrows and defeats andDisillusionments were good,Met with courage and a gay heart.You are gone and we are thatMuch more alone. We are one fewer,Soon we shall be none. We know nowWe have failed for a long time.And we do not care. We few willRemember as long as we can,Our children may remember,Some day the world will remember.Then they will say, “They lived inThe days of the good comrades.It must have been wonderfulTo have been alive then, though itIs very beautiful now.”We will be remembered, allOf us, always, by all men,In the good days now so far away.If the good days never come,We will not know. We will not care.Our lives were the best. We were theHappiest men alive in our day.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

There were never strawberrieslike the ones we hadthat sultry afternoonsitting on the stepof the open french windowfacing each otheryour knees held in minethe blue plates in our lapsthe strawberries glisteningin the hot sunlightwe dipped them in sugarlooking at each othernot hurrying the feastfor one to comethe empty plateslaid on the stone togetherwith the two forks crossedand I bent towards yousweet in that airin my armsabandoned like a childfrom your eager mouththe taste of strawberriesin my memorylean back againlet me love youlet the sun beaton our forgetfulnessone hour of allthe heat intenseand summer lightningon the Kilpatrick hills

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

1One day in a popular quarter of Kharkov,(O that southern Russia where all the womenWith white-shawled heads look so like Madonnas!)I saw a young woman returning from the fountain,Bearing, Russian-style, as Roman women did in the time of Ovid,Two pails suspended from the ends of a woodenYoke balanced on neck and shoulders.And I saw a child in rags approach and speak to her.Then, bending her body lovingly to the right,She moved so the pail of pure water touched the cobblestoneLevel with the lips of the child who had kneeled to drink.

2One morning, in Rotterdam, on Boompjes quai(It was September 18, 1900, around eight o'clock),I observed two young ladies on their way to work;Opposite one of the great iron bridges, they said farewell,Their paths diverging.Tenderly they embraced; their trembling handsWanted, but did not want, to part; their mouthsWithdrew sadly and came together again soon againWhile they gazed fixedly into each other's eyes . . .They stood thus for a long moment side by side,Straight and still amid the busy throng,While the tugboats rumbled by on the river,And the whistling trains maneuvered on the iron bridges.

3Between Cordova and SevilleIs a little station where the South Express,For no apparent reason, always stops.In vain the traveler looks for a villageBeyond the station asleep under the eucalyptus:He sees but the Andalusian countryside: green and golden.But across the way, on the other side of the track,Is a hut made of black boughs and clay.From which, at the sound of the train, ragged children swarm forth,The eldest sister, leading them, comes forward on the platformAnd, smiling, without uttering word,Dances for pennies.Her feet in the heavy dust look black;Her dark, filthy face is devoid of beauty;She dances, and through the large holes of her ash-gray skirt,One can see the the agitation of her thin, naked thighs,And the roll of her little yellow belly;At the sight of which a few gentlemen,Amid an aroma of cigars, chuckle obscenely in the dining car.

Post-scriptumO Lord will it never be possible for meTo know the sweet woman, there in southern Russia,And those two young friends in Rotterdam,And the young Andalusian beggarAnd join with themIn an indissoluble friendship?(Alas, they will not read these poems,They will know neither my name, nor the feeling in my heart;And yet they exist; they live now).Will it never be possible for me to experience the great joyOf knowing them?For some strange reason, Lord, I feel that with those fourI should conquer a whole world!

Monday, April 09, 2007

We are sorry to inform youthe item you orderedis no longer being produced.It has not gone out of stylenor have people lost interest in it.In fact, it has becomeone of our most desired products.Its popularity is still growing.Orders for it come inat an ever increasing rate.However, a top-level decisionhas caused this productto be discontinued forever.

Instead of the item you orderedwe are sending you something else.It is not the same thing,nor is it a reasonable facsimile.It is what we have in stock,the very best we can offer.

Always you will discoverSomething of me has vanished during the night,Something no one can do without.You have told yourself this so longYou are beginning to doubt it.Do not doubt, it is true,But it takes a long time.

You must not count my age in years,But days, even hours,There will be more that way.They will approximate my departure.

It is not easy, this drifting away,Maintaining what stays behind,The empty lung, the hair,Fingers playing the sheet.

You think this song will end.You buy a black hat, hire the mourners.One of them dies.I help grieve for her.

You prepare my last meal, and again my last.We are progressing.You must think of the cracks on the ceiling,The peculiar behaviour of mice.It will become automatic as breath,You will say, yes,She is still among us.

Friday, April 06, 2007

After the wolves and before the elmsthe bardic order ended in Ireland.

Only a few remained to continuea dead art in a dying land:

This is a manon the road from Youghal to Cahirmoyle.He has no comfort, no food and no future.He has no fire to recite his friendless measures by.His riddles and flatteries will have no reward.His patrons sheath their swords in Flanders and Madrid.

Reader of poems, lover of poetry—in case you thought this was a gentle artfollow this man on a moonless nightto the wretched bed he will have to make:

The Gaelic world stretches out under a hawthorn treeand burns in the rain. This is its home,its last frail shelter. All of it—Limerick, the Wild Geese and what went before—falters into cadence before he sleeps:He shuts his eyes. Darkness falls on it.

Monday, April 02, 2007

(Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)Night, two o'clock: moonlight. The train has stoppedin the middle of the plain. Distant bright points of a towntwinkle cold on the horizon.As when someone has gone into a dream so farthat he'll never remember he was therewhen he comes back to his room.And as when someone goes into a sickness so deepthat all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,cold and feeble on the horizon.The train stands perfectly still.Two o'clock: full moonlight, few stars.